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Freedom Friday -- The Return!
Aug. 2nd, 2024 11:55 pmYes, I am now officially Off For Vacation! Which is always a nice feeling. :) My first half-day wasn't particularly exciting, but I checked off everything I wanted to do on the old to-do list, which is good --
Work – Another quiet day, happily – I did the GL, I looked at the failed credit card transactions and made whatever changes needed to be made there, then spent pretty much the entire rest of the day working on that list of updated parishioners from one of the parishes, editing and adding people as necessary. Didn’t QUITE finish it off before we left, but I came close enough. And now I am off for the next ten days, yaaaay~ Hopefully I’ll be able to make the most of them!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – final night on the bike this week, final night with the GrayStillPlays compilation “Busting 500 Myths in GTA 5!” Which saw us move on from the fear-based stuff to Gray busting movie-and-TV-based myths (such as proving you could outrun a bad guy in the KITT-like Ruiner, then do a 360-no-scope hit on his car with a rocket as you flew off the end of the elevated platform you were both driving down (it took ages, but Gray managed it), or that you can save Dollar Store Gwen Stacy from falling to her death via skydiving if Alex has modded it so she’ll stick to Gray if he gets close enough to her (he SORT OF managed this, in that he got her stuck to him but she died when they hit the ground and then started levitating, sending them both back into the sky)) and the weirdest myths people could think for Gray to test (such as proving you could survive a fall from a skyscraper if you hit the boost turbine of a jet – you can, it just throws you backwards; that a mountain lion falling on you from a small ledge will kill you – it does, and it takes out the mountain lion too; or that you can indeed skydive under the canyon bridge near the nudist village without dying – you can, it just requires getting your speed and angle EXACTLY right so you can bank left and not smash into the rocks right by the bridge). All prime GTA V content, as I am sure you will agree. XD But yeah, I’m now all sorted with two more compilations – next week, Happy Wheels and more Every Life Stage Challenge!
2. Continue editing “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of”: Check – I did indeed manage to finish off Chapter 4 today, with Victor managing to stop Alice and Smiler from walking into a waiting specter...and accidentally tricking Tannen into doing so instead. Buying them the time they needed to get away, to a slightly more private alley where he could have a slightly more private freakout about his new Ghost Mind ability. XD But yeah, that and Smiler getting a little too into figuring out how it worked capped off the chapter – I’ve saved it as a separate file, and we’ll see about starting the final editing pass before posting tomorrow!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check plus – cleaned up my Watch Later AND my Subs, yaaay –
A) First up this afternoon, we had the OXBoxtra lists of the week –
I. “8 Times Nintendo's Lawyers Ruined Everyone's Good Time” – Andy and Ellen going through those times when Nintendo prioritized putting smiles on their lawyers’ faces over everyone else’s. Have a site that serves as a repository for Pokemon fan games that you make ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN makes no money? Nintendo will hit you with a DMCA takedown order right before the site’s tenth birthday. Want to upload some Nintendo game music to YouTube for everyone to enjoy because Nintendo won’t release the OSTs themselves? Hope you enjoy losing those videos and possibly your entire channel thanks to Nintendo peppering you with copyright strikes! Decide to brand your actually-on-the-busy-streets-of-Tokyo go-karting experience with Mario Kart livery and costumes? Nintendo will tell you to cut that shit out, and the commenters on the video will go “actually that seems like a good call, that looks SUPER fucking dangerous.” (Also apparently the locals hate it.) Good thing they also showcased a couple of times that Nintendo lost, like the Game Genie being declared a “fair use” product (after two years of legal limbo, admittedly) and Blockbuster retaining the ability to rent games so you could try before you buy (though they weren’t allowed to copy the manuals, instead having to provide their own versions). Gives us a little hope that Nintendo won’t kill everything we love!
II. “7 Times Games Trolled You Hard” – Jane and Andy talking about those times both in and out of games where developers trolled the hell out of their fans. From the people behind Street Fighter X Tekken including, not regular Mega Man, but “Bad Box Art” Mega Man (a 40ish-man in a vaguely Mega-Man-looking suit from the box art of the original game) as a tribute to the character for his 25th anniversary; to one of the Dark Souls developers making the fans think that the useless pendant gift does something by saying in an interview that he’d pick it as his starting gift over everything else; to The Stanley Parable having an “impossible-to-get” achievement that can be achieved – but you’ll never know how because a specific developer on the team CHANGES THE METHOD by which you can grab it every time the current one becomes a little too well-known, these developers look at their fans and see, not loyal customers or a revenue stream, but a ready-made group of people to torment. At least the Final Fantasy VII fans did eventually get their remake – even if it wasn’t what they expected out of one! (Seriously, no idea what’s going on with that except it seems to be full of meta bullshit.)
B) And second up, after Game Night (card games tonight; I did really well in Scrabble Slam, Sorry Revenge, and Hit the Deck, yay), we had GrayStillPlays and “I played the dumbest roblox games so you don't have to!” Featuring Gray taking on the seven weirdest and dumbest Roblox games his team of torture technicians could find! How did they all rank up? Well –
I. The Normal Elevator – A game where you ride an elevator, which takes you to different scenes you can watch and occasionally interact with (like a Pokemon battle, or a couple of SWAT officers looking for a criminal, or a long corridor watched over by mini-figures in the walls). Gray didn’t find the game itself particularly weird, rating it a 2/10 – but found the people riding with him quite weird (there was a Roblox guy with lots and lots of blocky muscles, and one girl who changed her head to a giant one with crying eyes midway through), so he gave them a 6/10
II. Poop-Eating Simulator – A game where you start off as an average Roblox person, and you wander the various landscapes on offer (a sandy beach, a windy west, a shipping dock, and a winter wonderland, to give some examples) eating the various poops you find (both just laying on the ground and sculpted into things – there were a fair amount of poop trees, for example) to make yourself bigger. Some made you wider, some made you taller, some specifically affected your head – there was a whole bunch of ways to embiggen yourself with poop. Gray was impressed with the effort the creators put in to make this an actual game, but also didn’t find it especially WEIRD, even with the premise. You just went around and absorbed poop. It was more predictable than anything, so just a 1.5/10
III. Beat-Up Simulator – A game where you watch two figures beat each other up, and you can select from various options to control what they do to each other (from standard slaps and kicks and yeets, to more complicated scenarios like an exchange of a torch for a rock going bad), where the beatdowns occur (options included your average kitchen, the “are you winning son” meme, and a fast-food joint), and what other weirdness might occur (including Goku showing up in some sweet new threads). Unlike the last one, this wasn’t really a game, and it also wasn’t particularly weird, so Gray gave it a mere 1/10 (explicitly stating that one point was for Goku)
IV. Bake The Baby – A multiplayer game where you control either a baby trying not to get shoved into an oven by a chef, or a chef trying to show babies into ovens, alternating which one you are each round. There’s a few different boards you can play in (like on a sailing ship, or in your average city street), and if you’re a baby, you can help other babies escape from the ovens so they don’t get baked to death. Gray found the whole thing very concerning but also very well done (pun not intended) and weird enough that he felt dirty whenever he won, particularly as a chef. This earned it a 6/10
V. Human Giraffe – A game where you have a long neck and can wander around through weird floppy hot-dog things and fight other people in the PVP area by licking them – though Gray’s experience was more “a game where your head glitches off your body and you fall through the map.” XD Definitely weird, especially with Gray’s head refusing to stay attached, but Gray had to knock it a few points for not having that much to actually do, meaning it only got a 4/10
VI. Raise A Granny – A game where you raise your very own grandmother! Which involves feeding her, cleaning her litter box, and clicking on her regularly to get cash to buy things! Like food! And a TV! And a grandson! Also a random guy looking to buy ferns shows up every so often. Gray decided fern guy and the weirdly-realistic grandson were worth a few points, but that the game wasn’t that weird in the end (I think he was a little annoyed at trying to figure out how to keep Granny alive – if she dies you get kicked out and get an error code) – just a 3.5/10 for this one
VII. Don’t Get Licked – A game where you must navigate a maze of hallways and weird puzzle sections, collecting teeth and avoiding being licked by a giant mobile tongue with eyes. Because if you get licked you explode. You also get the option to BECOME a giant tongue yourself to torment others if you have the cash, which Gray happily took. Gray enjoyed the nonsense (despite the fact that it forced his character to run around without clothes on), but said he found it more “disturbing” than “weird,” so he gave it just 5/10. Meaning the weirdest game of the lot was Bake The Baby! XD Which, okay, you know what? Seems pretty fair. XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – while there was nothing happening over on Valice Multiverse, I was able to get some good work done regarding the next Chill Valicer Save update on Victor Luvs Alice – got the pictures sorted (80 in total, though not every one made it into the actual posts), and the posts drafted (back to the standard five!). So I’m a little ahead of the game on that tonight. :) We’ll get those cleaned up a bit and start working on image alt text and tags tomorrow!
*nods* Not bad, not bad at all. And now I should start working on wrapping things up so I don't go to bed too late. :p Tomorrow -- well, it's gonna be either sunny, hot, and steamy or rainy, hot, and steamy, who the fuck knows anymore. But I doubt we'll be doing anywhere, so the plan is to work on my Chill Valicer Save update on Victor Luvs Alice; play Sims 4 and see about finishing up my Ministry of Joy Nightclub build; watch GrayStillPlays and Jon's new Fallout: London episode; and see about getting Chapter 4 of "Start At The Beginning...Sort Of" ready for publishing (it's only seven pages, I might be able to do it all tomorrow...). Should be fun, I hope! Night all!
Work – Another quiet day, happily – I did the GL, I looked at the failed credit card transactions and made whatever changes needed to be made there, then spent pretty much the entire rest of the day working on that list of updated parishioners from one of the parishes, editing and adding people as necessary. Didn’t QUITE finish it off before we left, but I came close enough. And now I am off for the next ten days, yaaaay~ Hopefully I’ll be able to make the most of them!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – final night on the bike this week, final night with the GrayStillPlays compilation “Busting 500 Myths in GTA 5!” Which saw us move on from the fear-based stuff to Gray busting movie-and-TV-based myths (such as proving you could outrun a bad guy in the KITT-like Ruiner, then do a 360-no-scope hit on his car with a rocket as you flew off the end of the elevated platform you were both driving down (it took ages, but Gray managed it), or that you can save Dollar Store Gwen Stacy from falling to her death via skydiving if Alex has modded it so she’ll stick to Gray if he gets close enough to her (he SORT OF managed this, in that he got her stuck to him but she died when they hit the ground and then started levitating, sending them both back into the sky)) and the weirdest myths people could think for Gray to test (such as proving you could survive a fall from a skyscraper if you hit the boost turbine of a jet – you can, it just throws you backwards; that a mountain lion falling on you from a small ledge will kill you – it does, and it takes out the mountain lion too; or that you can indeed skydive under the canyon bridge near the nudist village without dying – you can, it just requires getting your speed and angle EXACTLY right so you can bank left and not smash into the rocks right by the bridge). All prime GTA V content, as I am sure you will agree. XD But yeah, I’m now all sorted with two more compilations – next week, Happy Wheels and more Every Life Stage Challenge!
2. Continue editing “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of”: Check – I did indeed manage to finish off Chapter 4 today, with Victor managing to stop Alice and Smiler from walking into a waiting specter...and accidentally tricking Tannen into doing so instead. Buying them the time they needed to get away, to a slightly more private alley where he could have a slightly more private freakout about his new Ghost Mind ability. XD But yeah, that and Smiler getting a little too into figuring out how it worked capped off the chapter – I’ve saved it as a separate file, and we’ll see about starting the final editing pass before posting tomorrow!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check plus – cleaned up my Watch Later AND my Subs, yaaay –
A) First up this afternoon, we had the OXBoxtra lists of the week –
I. “8 Times Nintendo's Lawyers Ruined Everyone's Good Time” – Andy and Ellen going through those times when Nintendo prioritized putting smiles on their lawyers’ faces over everyone else’s. Have a site that serves as a repository for Pokemon fan games that you make ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN makes no money? Nintendo will hit you with a DMCA takedown order right before the site’s tenth birthday. Want to upload some Nintendo game music to YouTube for everyone to enjoy because Nintendo won’t release the OSTs themselves? Hope you enjoy losing those videos and possibly your entire channel thanks to Nintendo peppering you with copyright strikes! Decide to brand your actually-on-the-busy-streets-of-Tokyo go-karting experience with Mario Kart livery and costumes? Nintendo will tell you to cut that shit out, and the commenters on the video will go “actually that seems like a good call, that looks SUPER fucking dangerous.” (Also apparently the locals hate it.) Good thing they also showcased a couple of times that Nintendo lost, like the Game Genie being declared a “fair use” product (after two years of legal limbo, admittedly) and Blockbuster retaining the ability to rent games so you could try before you buy (though they weren’t allowed to copy the manuals, instead having to provide their own versions). Gives us a little hope that Nintendo won’t kill everything we love!
II. “7 Times Games Trolled You Hard” – Jane and Andy talking about those times both in and out of games where developers trolled the hell out of their fans. From the people behind Street Fighter X Tekken including, not regular Mega Man, but “Bad Box Art” Mega Man (a 40ish-man in a vaguely Mega-Man-looking suit from the box art of the original game) as a tribute to the character for his 25th anniversary; to one of the Dark Souls developers making the fans think that the useless pendant gift does something by saying in an interview that he’d pick it as his starting gift over everything else; to The Stanley Parable having an “impossible-to-get” achievement that can be achieved – but you’ll never know how because a specific developer on the team CHANGES THE METHOD by which you can grab it every time the current one becomes a little too well-known, these developers look at their fans and see, not loyal customers or a revenue stream, but a ready-made group of people to torment. At least the Final Fantasy VII fans did eventually get their remake – even if it wasn’t what they expected out of one! (Seriously, no idea what’s going on with that except it seems to be full of meta bullshit.)
B) And second up, after Game Night (card games tonight; I did really well in Scrabble Slam, Sorry Revenge, and Hit the Deck, yay), we had GrayStillPlays and “I played the dumbest roblox games so you don't have to!” Featuring Gray taking on the seven weirdest and dumbest Roblox games his team of torture technicians could find! How did they all rank up? Well –
I. The Normal Elevator – A game where you ride an elevator, which takes you to different scenes you can watch and occasionally interact with (like a Pokemon battle, or a couple of SWAT officers looking for a criminal, or a long corridor watched over by mini-figures in the walls). Gray didn’t find the game itself particularly weird, rating it a 2/10 – but found the people riding with him quite weird (there was a Roblox guy with lots and lots of blocky muscles, and one girl who changed her head to a giant one with crying eyes midway through), so he gave them a 6/10
II. Poop-Eating Simulator – A game where you start off as an average Roblox person, and you wander the various landscapes on offer (a sandy beach, a windy west, a shipping dock, and a winter wonderland, to give some examples) eating the various poops you find (both just laying on the ground and sculpted into things – there were a fair amount of poop trees, for example) to make yourself bigger. Some made you wider, some made you taller, some specifically affected your head – there was a whole bunch of ways to embiggen yourself with poop. Gray was impressed with the effort the creators put in to make this an actual game, but also didn’t find it especially WEIRD, even with the premise. You just went around and absorbed poop. It was more predictable than anything, so just a 1.5/10
III. Beat-Up Simulator – A game where you watch two figures beat each other up, and you can select from various options to control what they do to each other (from standard slaps and kicks and yeets, to more complicated scenarios like an exchange of a torch for a rock going bad), where the beatdowns occur (options included your average kitchen, the “are you winning son” meme, and a fast-food joint), and what other weirdness might occur (including Goku showing up in some sweet new threads). Unlike the last one, this wasn’t really a game, and it also wasn’t particularly weird, so Gray gave it a mere 1/10 (explicitly stating that one point was for Goku)
IV. Bake The Baby – A multiplayer game where you control either a baby trying not to get shoved into an oven by a chef, or a chef trying to show babies into ovens, alternating which one you are each round. There’s a few different boards you can play in (like on a sailing ship, or in your average city street), and if you’re a baby, you can help other babies escape from the ovens so they don’t get baked to death. Gray found the whole thing very concerning but also very well done (pun not intended) and weird enough that he felt dirty whenever he won, particularly as a chef. This earned it a 6/10
V. Human Giraffe – A game where you have a long neck and can wander around through weird floppy hot-dog things and fight other people in the PVP area by licking them – though Gray’s experience was more “a game where your head glitches off your body and you fall through the map.” XD Definitely weird, especially with Gray’s head refusing to stay attached, but Gray had to knock it a few points for not having that much to actually do, meaning it only got a 4/10
VI. Raise A Granny – A game where you raise your very own grandmother! Which involves feeding her, cleaning her litter box, and clicking on her regularly to get cash to buy things! Like food! And a TV! And a grandson! Also a random guy looking to buy ferns shows up every so often. Gray decided fern guy and the weirdly-realistic grandson were worth a few points, but that the game wasn’t that weird in the end (I think he was a little annoyed at trying to figure out how to keep Granny alive – if she dies you get kicked out and get an error code) – just a 3.5/10 for this one
VII. Don’t Get Licked – A game where you must navigate a maze of hallways and weird puzzle sections, collecting teeth and avoiding being licked by a giant mobile tongue with eyes. Because if you get licked you explode. You also get the option to BECOME a giant tongue yourself to torment others if you have the cash, which Gray happily took. Gray enjoyed the nonsense (despite the fact that it forced his character to run around without clothes on), but said he found it more “disturbing” than “weird,” so he gave it just 5/10. Meaning the weirdest game of the lot was Bake The Baby! XD Which, okay, you know what? Seems pretty fair. XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – while there was nothing happening over on Valice Multiverse, I was able to get some good work done regarding the next Chill Valicer Save update on Victor Luvs Alice – got the pictures sorted (80 in total, though not every one made it into the actual posts), and the posts drafted (back to the standard five!). So I’m a little ahead of the game on that tonight. :) We’ll get those cleaned up a bit and start working on image alt text and tags tomorrow!
*nods* Not bad, not bad at all. And now I should start working on wrapping things up so I don't go to bed too late. :p Tomorrow -- well, it's gonna be either sunny, hot, and steamy or rainy, hot, and steamy, who the fuck knows anymore. But I doubt we'll be doing anywhere, so the plan is to work on my Chill Valicer Save update on Victor Luvs Alice; play Sims 4 and see about finishing up my Ministry of Joy Nightclub build; watch GrayStillPlays and Jon's new Fallout: London episode; and see about getting Chapter 4 of "Start At The Beginning...Sort Of" ready for publishing (it's only seven pages, I might be able to do it all tomorrow...). Should be fun, I hope! Night all!
